How to manage with Server Overload?

A high load on your server causes plenty of problems. It’s one of those problems that’s the comparison of a server outage and put your service level agreement, as well as your company image, on the line. Someone can ill afford to let their systems encounter high load and server down troubles in the competitive hosting business.

Customers are affected by sluggish loading times, inaccessibility, and different problems showing up on websites with database-related issues as a result of the heavy load. Furthermore, you begin to get complaints from your end customers who are running mission-critical apps and doing live online transactions. Customers discover email problems and numerous mistakes, disrupting their regular work routines. When you start getting complaints about websites not working and consumers doubting your server uptime promise, it may be very irritating. The actual scenario arises when your system administrators discover that excessive load is the cause of consumers’ inability to access their websites.

So, how do you handle a server with a heavy load?

As a server expert, we deal with high load problems daily, and we’ve discovered that spamming, eCommerce cron tasks, high disc use activities like SQL queries, and high IO wait on the disc are among the most common causes of high load.

Here are some of the most common reasons for the high server load that we’ve seen.

• Server overload Spam
• Hard disc speed
• Cron Job Scheduling
• Database speed.
• infected computers

Overloaded server with too many accounts is a common cause of high load. Spamming causes many problems with your server, such as your mail server using unnecessary resources, IPs being blacklisted in sections contains databases, and server IP reputation being put in danger, going to result in bounce back issues with major providers such as Google and Hotmail. At the same time, your email queue is packed with millions of emails due to bounce-back messages.

Cron tasks, for example, may cause a lot of loads. Magento application-based cron tasks that run regularly to update inventory goods.

The high load may also be caused by a database server such as MySQL, since certain websites that run numerous JOIN queries take too long to complete, resulting in a high load.

The backup procedure is now underway and taking an excessive amount of time to finish.

To prevent high load problems, take a systematic approach to optimize your server.

1. Selecting the Appropriate Server Hardware

Your server’s hardware has a significant impact on its performance. You’ll need to figure out how many accounts/domains you’ll be hosting on your server before placing a purchase.

With 8 cores, 32GB RAM, and SSD storage, a decent server should be able to manage 200 to 300 accounts with ease. If you have too many accounts on your server, you will run out of resources. Only when you have adequate resources on your server can optimization assist. Take advantage of the cloud Linux kernel, which allows you to set resource limits per account.

2. Choosing Hard Disk Drives Carefully.

The hard drive on the server should be in excellent working order. Examine the dmesg log for disc input/output performance, as well as the IO Wait parameters. To measure disc activity, you may use a variety of commands. Take, for example, the iostat command.

iostat -p sda

By measuring the time the devices are active in proportion to their average transfer rates, the iostat command aids in the monitoring of system input/output device loads.

iotop is another often used command.

The iotop command is a top-style tool for monitoring disc I/O. It collects I/O use data from the Linux kernel so you can see which programs are the most resource-intensive in terms of disc I/O.

I suggest utilizing SSDs (Solid State Drives) since they perform considerably better than standard SATA discs. On different forums and websites, you may learn more about SSD drives. The majority of servers now come with SSD drives and are less costly than traditional disc servers.

3. Create a backup schedule.

Schedule the backup to run during off-peak hours since this will enable the backup to be finished quickly because the server’s resources will be largely free. You can find out how your server is used and when your backups should be done.

Keep an eye on the backup log report to check whether the backup was finished on time. LFD will send you a notice on cPanel servers, as seen below.

The backup procedure has finished successfully.

Start Time:- Monday, January 13, 2020, at 8:30:01 PM UTC

End Time:- Monday, January 13, 2020, at 8:43:43 PM UTC

Run Time:- 13 Min and 42 Sec

You may also look at “/usr/local/cpanel/logs/cpbackup/filename.log” for backup logs.

Cron Scheduling is a method of planning ahead of time. Determine which cron processes are currently active and running too often. We’ve observed that eCommerce websites like Magento, Joomla, and Opencart contain a lot of cron tasks that use a lot of resources. Consult the website owner before scheduling the cron tasks.

4. Keep an eye on the mail server.

Well, how to detect spamming on your server has been mentioned on various blogs, forums, and many other articles. To identify spamming, a variety of commands and tools are available. We’re not going to talk about that because our topic is a little different.

The biggest problem here is that you won’t be able to view the shell if your server is under heavy load. So, what are your options now? As shown in the image below, the best approach is to include monitor and control alerts in your monitoring platform.

The best strategy is to keep a close eye on the mailing activity. We use Nagios mail plug-ins, in particular, to detect relay notifications on the server. You can use whatever system you want, but you can’t allow spamming to happen without being discovered. We should be able to take appropriate action as soon as we receive an alert. The best strategy is to use proactive spam monitoring.

5. Give your database performance a lot of consideration.

One of the reasons for high server load activities is high database use. Mytop, an open-source and free monitoring tool for MySQL and MariaDB databases, can be installed. It looks and feels like top, the most well-known Linux system monitoring tool.

Mytop is a command-line shell interface that allows database administrators to monitor real-time MySQL/MariaDB threads, queries per second, process list, and database performance. It also offers database administrators ideas on how to better configure the server to manage high demand. Specifically, to identify JOIN-related queries, queries with a long wait time, and so forth.

6. Identify security threats like Viruses and Malwares.

Servers hosting insecure websites like WordPress, e-commerce applications may be attacked with viruses and malware. The reason may be linked with websites using outdated versions, unsafe third-party plugins, etc. Such vulnerable websites may be abused for conducting outbound DDOS attacks resulting in significant CPU usage and network traffic. Ensure that your websites are properly protected with the current version, patched, and implement appropriate security measures on the server. Install firewalls, antivirus software’s and web application firewall ( WAF ) on servers.

So are you struggling with a high load on your server? Our knowledge and skill in maintaining and monitoring heavy load servers are tested and we do the correct things to methodically improve the server for optimal performance.